


A Body in the Garden

by ClockworkCourier



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Autopsies, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dreams and Nightmares, Drunken Confessions, Flashbacks, Gen, Ghosts, Hallucinations, Historical References, Humor, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Protective Siblings, Spectral Crustaceans, Talking To Dead People
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2019-12-07 04:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18230150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkCourier/pseuds/ClockworkCourier
Summary: Harry Goodsir has been haunted by the first autopsy that he had to do aboardErebus. This is very literal—the ghost won't leave him alone.And this may not be a bad thing.





	1. Prologue: A mizzenmast funeral

**Author's Note:**

> [rolls across the gravel of beechey island like a chinchilla rolling in dust] my city now, dan simmons.
> 
> legit this is just me using my sweet, sweet hyperfixation on john hartnell, trying to fix the weird death he gets in the book, and allowing this to be as self-indulgent as i want. any errors are my own, etc. etc. okay love you bye.

Come follow us, and smile as we;   
We sail to the rock in the ancient waves,   
Where the snow falls by thousands into the sea,   
And the drown'd and the shipwreck'd have happy graves.

“Dirge”, Thomas Lovell Beddoes 

* * *

 

_8th January 1846, Beechey Island_

Harry Goodsir wouldn’t dare say it out loud—and certainly not on such an occasion—but he’s quite certain that Sir John Franklin greatly enjoys the sound of his own voice. Of course, Harry defers to the fact that Sir John _is_ an eminent captain, knighted, and worthy of a good deal of respect. He’s probably found a great many opportunities to speak, and the sway of religion makes a fine reverend out of him as well. However, it does not change the fact that he’s found that very same leave to preach for three quarters of an hour in sub-zero temperatures, with every man on deck dressed in layers to the ears, shivering in their stiff, orderly placements. Beyond them, the Arctic darkness casts a heavy pall, only just lessened by hanging lanterns casting sickly, wax-coloured light on the canvas over their heads. The glow makes grotesques of the men, their faces contorted with strange, flickering shadows. Most must wish they were belowdecks now, away from this whole miserable affair. They’ve left behind games, books, and instruments, all to attend—  
  
“We must all take comfort in the Lord, in both our greatest hours of need, and in our hours of ease,” Sir John is saying, having now repeated himself thrice. “And remember to put our trust in Him who knows not only our pain, but the pain of all humanity. We may indeed take comfort knowing that He has eased the pain of John Hartnell, and taken him into His loving embrace, to finer comforts than any of us shall know until our appointed date.”  
  
There are a few murmurs of, “Hear, hear,” or, “Amen,” from the men, but otherwise, the narrow space stifles in silence. The wind percusses against the canvas and provides a mournful wail through the remaining rigging that hasn’t been removed in the wintering process. Harry is only slightly alarmed when he hears Sir John shuffle through the papers in his hand, and there’s a thought that crosses his mind, suggesting that Sir John has been awaiting _Erebus’_ first funeral and may have had a good deal of his speech prewritten. Honestly, Harry’s heard far fewer words spared for men high above the rank of an AB.  
  
He checks himself quickly, especially when he hears sniffing nearby. It may be the cold having that effect, but Harry only must glance up once to see Billy Orren biting down on his bottom lip and fixing his eyes straight ahead. To Orren’s left, Thomas Tadman disguises the act of wiping his eyes as scratching at his cheek. John Strickland stands with his hands curled into fists at his sides while he tries to hold his posture even as he trembles. And Tom Hartnell—  
  
Well, Harry has done his best to avoid looking at the poor man. Just prior to Christmas, when John Hartnell’s condition began to quickly deteriorate, Tom had been a near-constant presence in the sick bay. He’s heard their quiet conversations, listened to Tom read to his dying brother, watched as he held John’s hand and recalled stories from their childhood. Such a display of brotherly affection should have done Harry some good, but it had only served to remind him of the family he’d left behind and haunted him with thoughts of having to do the same with his own siblings. And then he recalls Tom’s reaction to overhearing Sir John’s orders for an investigation.  
  
No, he does not look at Tom Hartnell.  Instead, he does himself a worse favour by looking at the coffin.  
  
It's supported on a pallet at the base of the mizzenmast, flanked by Sir John and Commander Fitzjames on the right, and a huddle of Marines on the left. A single lantern shudders light on a shrouded John Hartnell, wrapped from the waist down to give him the illusion of being in repose. Were it not for the unmistakable connotations of a coffin, one might be led to believe that he’s simply taking a well-attended nap. He’s dressed in clothing better suited for the shores of England—perhaps wishful thinking on his crewmates’ parts—with his thin wool watch cap pulled low over his ears and only wisps of dark hair peeking out from underneath, and three shirts layered over one another. His beard is closely shaved, his nails trimmed, hands clean. Only his expression strikes Harry as out of place.  
  
Somehow, regardless of careful attempts otherwise, John Hartnell looks restless, as though he’s been caught in an unpleasant dream. It may be a trick of lantern light, casting shadows on the hollows of his cheeks and the sunken depths of his eyes. It may also be a trick of Harry’s own mind—his heart sinks like a leaden weight in his chest at the thought of what he’s had to do to this poor man. John will be committed to his grave with the mark of an anatomist right down his centre, like he was little more than a Surgeons’ College specimen. Sailors are a notoriously superstitious sort, and their worries are like a contagion. _Not going to his grave whole can lead a man to wander,_ someone had once told him.  
  
Logic, on the other hand, firmly says that men in graves do not wander at all.  
  
“He is at rest now,” Sir John adds, and Harry’s head goes up as though the captain has somehow heard his thoughts. However, Sir John is looking down at the coffin with a mien of pride as though he’s gotten the honour of eulogising a decorated officer, rather than an AB. The closest lantern casts a halo of light behind the captain’s head, but his shadow falls on John. “And though he leaves behind his earthly form, we know that his soul is destined for brighter realms than these; for he chose his mortal path, and thus forged his heavenly one. Perhaps through this, in our dark hour, we may consider the wisdom of the Word, as it says in Haggai: ‘ _Thus, saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.’_ ” Then, like a father tucking in his child, Sir John moves to the side of the coffin and pulls up the folded section of the shroud, draping it over John’s face where it tents over the shapes of his forehead and nose. Then, Sir John resumes his post beside Fitzjames.  
  
That sets off a silent signal, as two Marines step forward to carefully lift the coffin lid from beside the pallet. John Weekes, the carpenter, steps forward and exchanges a few words with Sir John, while a few other men start to ready the sledge that will take John Hartnell to his prepared grave, cut into the unrelenting ice and gravel only a few days prior. It was strange then, Harry had thought, watching the shadows of men with pickaxes make a grave for a man not yet dead. He had seen them from the gunwale, anonymous in their silhouettes, illuminated only by short bursts of white sparks from metal hitting frozen ground. Now, he watches perhaps the same men ready the sledge as Weekes nails down the coffin lid. On the lid is a simple marker in the shape of a shield, ingeniously constructed from a flattened Goldner’s tin. It’s been hammered and decorated by some of John’s crewmates, his name, date of death, and age carefully etched onto its surface. The rest of the coffin is covered in a layer of dark blue wool, tapered off with white edging. As the wind shrieks through the narrow space, Harry watches a few snowflakes cling to the covering.  
  
He supposes there should be a sense of finality that comes with the proverbial final nail. However, as Weekes takes his place among the rank and file and the Marines hoist the coffin from the pallet to the sledge, Harry can’t help but feel a sense of something being out of place, rather like leaving some important item at home and walking away without it. He watches the sledge be hoisted onto one of the boats, followed by pallbearers: Tadman, Orren, Sullivan, Strickland, and Tom Hartnell, of course. Although Harry has only had a few months to learn the names and homes of these men, he knows through quiet conversation in the infirmary that four of the men come from near Chatham, and felt it was only suitable to carry their fellow Medway-dweller to his final resting place. Strickland is from farther afield, but is a first cousin of the brothers. Harry observes them taking their places on the boat, with Tom looking like a sorrowful penitent at the foot of his brother’s coffin. His head lowers, and all Harry can see is his hand raise to rest on the fabric of the lid before the boat is slowly lowered out of sight.  
  
A few more men head toward the snow ramp, clearly headed toward the secondary funeral that will be held at the gravesite. This one won’t be attended by the captain and commander and will probably be followed by a wake in the galley, where respectful, ministerial eulogies will give way to more colourful reports of John Hartnell’s life, exchanged over the double allotment of rum that Sir John has conceded to in order to “perk their spirits”.  
  
Beside Harry, Doctor Stanley heaves a sigh and rubs at the bridge of his nose. “That’s that, then,” he says, as if John’s death and burial were part of an itinerary. He looks up only once to direct a look of weary irritation at Weekes and Watson, now engaged in a quiet conversation with a few of the remaining ABs near the mouth of the ramp. “Let’s hope we needn’t engage in any more of their services.”  
  
For a moment, Harry believes that Stanley truly hopes for the recovery of the remaining men in the sick bay. There are two others who show signs of John Hartnell’s same symptoms, including one poor Marine who seems to be fraught to the bone with it.  
  
Then, Stanley shoves his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat and turns toward the stairs. “Those coffins take up too much room,” he grumbles.  
  
Admittedly, Harry’s expectations might have been a bit high.  
  
“Should I go down with you then?” Harry asks. When Stanley turns and gives him a slightly dour look, frowning with eyebrows furrowed, Harry can’t help but explain himself. “For the other men, that is.”  
  
“ _I_ am going to bed. It has been an enormously trying day and I’d rather not attend to the other men with the same sense of exhaustion I feel now,” Stanley replies. “You may do as you choose.”  
  
He doesn’t give another word, instead stomping away until he disappears into the sea of men and lantern smoke, leaving Harry standing awkwardly on deck while everyone disperses towards their respective activities. The sombre atmosphere, however, has not faded, as even Fitzjames lacks a quip and only bids Sir John a good night before presumably walking back to the comfort of his cabin.  Sir John replaces his bicorn as he catches sight of Harry, and before he can formulate an excuse to attend to the others who are ill, or examine lichens, or literally anything else, the captain is giving him a smile that falls just on one side of weary. “Mister Goodsir,” he says, inclining his head as a greeting.  
  
“Sir John,” Harry responds. He casts about in his head for some due compliment. “That was a very… _inspired_ eulogy you gave for Mister Hartnell. I’m sure he would have been honoured.”  
  
Sir John bobs his head graciously. “I thank you, Mister Goodsir. Only I had hoped that we might refrain from losing a crewmember so soon in the expedition.”  
  
For a moment, Harry thinks there might be some blame being wielded here, but then sees that Sir John looks unflinchingly honest about his regrets. Of course, he would be, just as Captain Crozier must have felt only three days before when _Terror_ had to bury their lead stoker, who is now mates in the yard with Mister Hartnell. It hadn’t been good auspices to start off their New Year with both a funeral and the sight of Doctor Peddie burning bloody rags. Now that _Erebus_ has lost one of her own, it’s any wonder that the morale at Beechey Island hasn’t been completely subdued.  
  
“My apologies, Sir John,” Harry finds himself saying, despite his lingering doubts being quelled. He holds his hands behind his back, fidgeting with a stray tail of yarn coming loose from his right mitten. “Doctor Stanley and I both believe that whatever afflicted the men sent back at the Whalefish Islands may have had some effect. It may have spread quicker than we had anticipated.”  
  
“Oh, Lord above, Mister Goodsir! I don’t blame you for the loss,” Sir John replies, brow furrowed. “I meant it simply as a statement of my own regret. The loss of any man on any expedition is… Well, it does not get easier, how ever many times it happens.”  
  
Right. The Man Who Ate His Own Boots would certainly know a thing or two about that, just as Captain Crozier would, if Harry’s late-night readings about their respective explorations have truth to them.  
  
“Despite all that,” Sir John continues. “I had intended to say that I fully appreciate the discretion with which you followed my orders. It was not easy, I know.”  
  
The autopsy, he means. There can be no other intent to his words. Sir John is fully aware of Harry’s experience as an anatomist and the weight that his family’s name carries in the scientific circles of Edinburgh and beyond, so it is no insult or belittlement of his own skills. Rather, the weight of the meaning is in the emotional toll.  
  
No one could mistake the wailing heard on the _Erebus_ that night.  
  
“Thank you, sir,” Harry replies, fidgeting further with the stray yarn so that it nearly forms a hole near the tip of his ring finger.  
  
Perhaps it is a reach to think so, but he wonders if Sir John’s mind goes with his own, to the small huddle of men down on the shore, presiding over an open grave and a young man standing beside it. He wonders if Sir John knows much about the Hartnells, of the two sisters and one brother that they left behind in Gillingham, that John found _the Vicar of Wakefield_ to be the most boring book in existence and found some energy to tell his brother so even when he was drowning in his own lungs, that their mother wrote church pamphlets to scrounge money together in lean times after the boys’ father had died, or that Tom now has a square of folded blue Chinese silk hidden in his coat—a memento that John had gotten after joining the Navy on his brother’s insistence. Sir John loves his men, certainly, but Harry feels that dissonance where there are more men than there are hours in the day, and not all of rank worth speaking to in long extensions.  
  
Their talk turns perfectly polite and short; does the infirmary have all the supplies they need and the like. Then, Sir John nods to Harry again, but looks up at the creases in the canvas roof, connected by wide splotches of whale oil light. “Was the eulogy truly inspired, you think?” he asks.  
  
“Pardon?”  
  
“Rather, did you believe that it was delivered well?” Sir John asks, more to the canvas than Harry. “It’s been some time since I had to provide such a sermon outside of a Sunday, and never in such circumstances. I meant to uplift the men, as it were, and I’m not entirely sure that I succeeded.”  
  
Harry isn’t sure how to respond, especially after thinking that Sir John was magnificently long-winded and wordy. Part of him wants to ask if the eulogy was prepared months prior to John Hartnell’s death, but that question is so beyond the realms of propriety that Harry would much rather fling himself off the gunwale than pose it. Instead, he gazes out through a gap in the canvas at the bleak, starless Arctic night. Somewhere, not so very far away, there are men sharing stories of John that Harry will never hear, and Sir John even less likely so.  
  
“I think it was perfectly inspired and performed, sir,” Harry offers, glancing up at Sir John. He looks as well-postured as a marble bust, and just as stiff. Hastily, Harry adds, “And I think the morale of the men did not suffer for it. Your tone was uplifting?”  
  
He doesn’t mean to make it sound like a question, but his tongue raises the end of the sentence into the back of his throat. Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to bother Sir John.  
  
“Thank you, Mister Goodsir. It was a regrettable circumstance, but I hope I’ve done the job credibly.”  
  
“No doubt, sir.”  
  
Sir John offers him a wan smile and bids him a good night. He walks down the deck like he’s at muster, making sure every piled crate and coil of rope is exactly where it needs to be. He pauses only once to look out at the sliver of night beyond the lanterns and canvas, towards their makeshift graveyard on the shore. Then, he nods to himself and is off, presumably to warmer quarters and the ship’s log.  
  
That leaves Harry on the deck with the remaining scattering of crewmen that have chosen to linger for one reason or another. He knows few of them outside of health and hygiene checks, and none so intimately as to strike up a conversation aside from complaining about the chill. Instead, he walks to a section of the gunwale where the canvas splits into a loosely-joined V of fabric. There’s very little to see on the horizon aside from dull, barely-perceptible shapes of dark landmasses against a black sky. He sees the faintest twinkle of lantern light from the second funeral, which takes the form of what appears to be a congealed mass of men, indistinguishable from one another.  
  
Harry thinks he hears some vocalization from one of them; a laugh or a sob, it’s impossible to know. It carries on the mournful howl of the wind and is gone as quick as a breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun-timey notes!
> 
> 1) The description of John's clothing/general upkeep comes directly from his grave contents. Most notably, he was dressed in one of Thomas' shirts, which isn't going to become a plot device or anything. He also died on January 4th but was probably buried a few days afterward, judging by the state of his body.
> 
> 2) Thomas Hartnell went to China as part of his travels on the HMS Volage. He switched out for the HMS Tortoise at the same time that John got on the Volage and went to Jamaica, Mexico, and then... somewhere. The record of the Volage stops there and doesn't resume until the 1850s. At least, not until someone hits the National Archives for that sweet, sweet captain's log.
> 
> 3) I have no idea how an on-ship-beset-in-ice-in-January seaman's funeral would have actually gone. Forgive me if you're an expert in said topic. I'm but a simple clown fresh out of Clown College.
> 
> 4) It's kind of an educated guess through some extensive research, but John Strickland may have been the Hartnell brothers' first cousin. A fun family trip! Yay!


	2. Better to envision heaven

Just as Harry’s suspected, word travels between the two ships at speeds incomprehensible. Undoubtedly, if a man aboard _Terror_ were to make an utter fool of himself during the night, the lads on _Erebus_ would know every sordid detail of the affair by the next morning, regardless of the distance between the ships.  
  
He looks at a sleeping David Young, at his sweat-damp face that looks every one of his eighteen years. Some little copse in Harry’s heart jerks at the thought of what David must think of him, and of how he’s come to his conclusion. It’s as if _Erebus_ had raised some arrangement of flags reading _Harry Goodsir dissected John Hartnell and sent him to his grave as such_ and _Terror_ received it with due fervour. Or, far more realistically, this signal must have come in the form of Tom Hartnell’s ship reassignment, and the rumours that followed on the wind with him.  
  
_Don’t cut me open,_ David had pleaded. He had looked at Harry the way a frightened child looks when they’re firm in the belief that ghouls and goblins conduct their affairs under the bed. And Harry had gently tried to comfort him, to ask him to envision all the good to come in the world beyond.  
  
_Tried_ was the operative word. Advice like that had done very little for those on the anatomists’ tables back in Edinburgh.  
  
He thinks on it now, on David’s face, as restless in his sleep as John Hartnell had appeared in his coffin. Sweat beads on his upper lip. A deep pinch stays stationary between his brows. Every minute or so, his body gives a great shudder before falling unnaturally still. Worst of all, his breaths are chest-deep rattles, like a pot overboiling. He supposes the advice is as sound as anything, considering the last days of David’s life are poor, even though he’s been afforded every comfort that the sick bay of _Erebus_ can possibly provide. Better to envision heaven.  
  
Harry sighs and checks his pocket watch, finding it to be a little after one o’clock in the morning. He tries once more to look at the contents of his book on Arctic flora but finds that the engravings and passages are becoming one great scientific blur. “Lord,” he whispers to himself, taking his glasses off and pressing his fingers against his overtired eyes. The little sparks in the dark of his eyelids dance merrily as he applies pressure. “One more hour. Just one,” he tells himself.  
  
“I wouldn’t count on that.”  
  
Harry’s head snaps up at the voice, suddenly finding the tallow-dim room to be strangely bright and saturated. He looks around and sees only the same trappings and arrangements; pots and glasses of supplies, bookshelf, beds, David fast asleep, and the guttering lanterns struggling in the darkness.  
  
It’s certainly a hallucination, and as the seconds audibly tick by through the thin fabric of his pocket, Harry’s sure that it’s a product of exhaustion. After all, David doesn’t stir save to shudder his way through another gurgling breath.  
  
Only— Only it was certainly a voice he’s heard before, and one that he’s found impossible to forget. Perhaps that’s part of the hallucination, being in such close proximity to a dying man. It conjured ghosts from smoke, and voices from laboured death rattles. Harry stares at the unmoving space, his eyes only catching on the rapid dance of the candle flame in the hanging lantern. There is nothing, nothing at all—  
  
Until he sees a shape lingering in the low doorframe, resolving itself from the darkness in the most singularly macabre way possible. Harry watches in horror as half of a bone-white face appears, one wide eye visible, and a skull’s grin set in a face that Harry had hoped to God that he would never have to see again. Harry’s breath quickens, heart wildly careening through its beats as fear makes a headlong descent down his spine. He blinks hard, trying to dispel the spectre—completely in vain.  
  
John Hartnell stares back at him from the doorway, with only David serving as a barrier between them. He takes a silent step into the room, looking exactly as he did prior to his burial, colourless and thin, clad in his watch cap and layered shirts. His sunken eyes are glassy with his pupils fixed wide, although they focus on Harry with a singular hawk-like fascination, and his strange rictus smile lists on one side. In a terrible, fascinating dissonance, John looks equally dead and alive, clearly upright when he should not be.  
  
Harry cannot speak. He thinks no one on the ship could blame him for that.  
  
As John walks into the room, he seems to drain every source of light and drop of colour—even the candle in the lantern struggles as he passes it by. Poor David gives another shudder, and John appears to regard him as a curiosity. He stops his perfectly silent walk, tilting his head toward David, eyes rolling in their sockets to look at him properly. Harry isn’t precisely sure what John must be looking for in the boy, or if he’s some horrific angel of death that Harry certainly hadn’t promised. Whatever he sees, it must amuse him. Grey lips quirk around bared teeth, and then his gaze rolls back to Harry.  
  
“Oh, Mister Goodsir,” he says. His voice is the strangest sort Harry’s ever heard, at once as distant as the open ocean, but as close as a whisper in his ear. It comes from deep in John’s chest, rattling about like a marble in a jar. “Do you mean to carve up poor Mister Young as well?”  
  
Harry’s voice makes several trembling false starts, manifesting as staccato hums. His throat tightens on every sound, choking them off. The effect must amuse John as his smile stays firmly tacked in place, which frankly is a horrible expression on a corpse.  
  
“Do I frighten you, sir?” he asks in what sounds like delighted disbelief. “Not used to your specimens being up and walking about, I reckon.”  
  
At that moment, David gives a violent shudder in his sleep, drawing John’s attention away from Harry, which is something of a blessing. Every muscle in Harry’s body is seized with a fearful paralysis and John’s gaze makes him feel as though it is a state he will be in forever.  
  
“Though I suppose fair’s fair,” John says, more to David than Harry. If Harry were in the state of mind to consider such things, he might think John looks thoughtful. His hands—as grey as the rest of him with knuckles the colour of ash—rest on the edge of David’s bed, one thumb smoothing down the hem of the wool blanket.  
  
Somehow, either by miracle or muscle spasm, Harry finds his voice tucked away and cowering in the folds of his larynx. “Wh-what is?” he asks.  
  
John does not look up from his study of David Young. “This lad will be demanding quite a bit of your attention soon enough,” he replies. “And I shouldn’t keep you from your rest, provided you find some tonight.”  
  
It's then that Harry notices the splotch of colour forming like an ink stain on the centre of the collar of John’s wool jumper. It’s sparse at first, just a sprinkle of crimson like flicks of a paintbrush. Then, with painful slowness, it blooms outward like a rose, flushed and dark. John notices it like an afterthought, glancing down at his shirt with disinterest. His right hand rises to it, fingers brushing against the stain, coming away streaked with red.  
  
His eyes find Harry’s again, as glassy and frosted as a frozen windowpane. His smile is even more crooked now, tugged up in one corner as if caught by a fishhook. “Take care with Mister Young, if you would. Mind him better than you minded me,” he says.  
  
And then he’s gone.  
  
Harry stares at the absence—that is what it is. John did not walk out of the room, and there was no gradual vanishment. He has simply ceased to be present in the space of a blink.  
  
The lanterns skittishly refund their warmth and light to the room, filling shady corners and gloomy niches with the pleasant amber glow. Colour returns to medicine bottle labels and dyed threads of blankets. David only minutely stirs in his sleep but shows no change in attitude toward the room itself. Only Harry feels like an outlier to the atmosphere, still rigid with terror, panting in shallow, rapid breaths, eyes wide and burning as he searches the room for any sign of the spectre.  
  
None, of course. The only answer to that silent question is the gradual groan of the ship shifting slightly to starboard.  
  
He sits there, in that moaning silence, and wonders if what he’s seen was real at all.

❧

 _David Young – dead_ , Harry writes. He peers at the words, squints, and scratches them out with the tip of his pen.  
  
_David Young, boy – deceased._ It looks better; more respectful. Doctor Stanley has already done his own notes, which amounted to something like: _Boy, consumptive, dead. Unremarkable_. The very least Harry can do is recall poor David’s name and rank, especially after he failed in his promise to retrieve his ring. He’ll try to remember to write a few notes to the sister David had mentioned, perhaps fondly recalling her brother as a gentle soul, quiet, and eager to please.  
  
To say nothing of the fact that he died screaming and wailing in fear while his eyes were fixed on a dark corner of the infirmary like they were bound and hauled to a capstan. Harry will neglect this in both his letter to the sister and in his own notes.  
  
_Hallucinatory symptoms – no fever,_ he writes instead. It’s concise and neat, and answers Harry’s question with perfect accuracy. Yes, certainly, what ever it was that David screamed about was Stanley’s ascribed twisting of the mind in the throes of illness. A spectre in the room was nothing more than an addled and ill brain.  
  
An exhausted mind. A mind overtaxed with work and lack of sleep.  
  
Harry sighs deeply, dipping his pen in the inkwell while looking over his scanty notes. Most of them are about digestive complaints or headaches (Harry has kindly not added margin notes to those claims that have more probable cause in wanting to escape watch duty or privy scrubbing). On a whim, he sets the pen aside and instead pages back through his notes—mindful of the wet ink—glancing through accounts of poorly-digested beef stew and embarrassing rashes. Eventually, he finds the page in mind.  
  
_4 th January 1846 – Beechey Is., _it reads.  
  
In the watery daylight coming through the patent illuminator above, Harry can see the heavy hand of his notes, where exhaustion and the weight of the day burdened every curl of a letter. In the senses preserved in his mind, he can still smell the acrid smoke of oil-fed lanterns burning through the omnipresent dark, only just flushing out the stench of dissected bowels and scattered viscera. David’s autopsy had progressed somewhat similarly in its technical aspect, aside from a proper Y-incision—until a point.  
  
_John Hartnell, AB, deceased at 25 years 8 mos. at approx. 7 o’clock this morn._  
  
The shorthand note belies the emotional truth of the matter. Harry remembers wearily looking at his watch, knowing it was morning only for the position of the hands on the face, and hardly for the absent light outside. Hartnell’s age he knew from Thomas’ trembling voice quietly saying, “I think it was May. He was born in May.”  
  
In the margins is a note that he had meant to give to Mister Bridgens when the time came to gather John’s personals, as Thomas had been indisposed, in a word. _To T. Hartnell and rest to go to Mrs Sarah Hartnell of G’ham, Kent upon arrival._  
  
He knows what the rest of the entry holds. Scientific jargon thinly masks the reality of the day, with all the verbiage worthy of university reports concealing the fact that Harry’s skull had echoed with grieving screams well into the night, keeping him from sleeping. His eyes catch on the words _no solid content in the bowel_ and he winces, all too tempted to shut the journal completely and revisit it later, content with Doctor Stanley’s terse but practical report.  
  
Not thinking of John dying on the bed, every rib prominent enough to be counted in series, the way he twisted away from even a cup of water as though it were intended to poison him, or the coughs that would come so hard as to make him retch.  
  
Stress must explain the ghost at David’s bedside. The more Harry examines his notes in the pale light, the more certain he becomes. Guilt has forged manacles for him, and he’s worn them willingly since the iron-weighted darkness of that January. To experience such a feeling again upon David’s death, there can be no question as to why such a vision would appear, how ever strangely vivid it was.  
  
He needs fresh air. A turn about the upper decks would do him well as the weather has been fine for the Arctic, even as the ice thickens in the water. Harry turns back to his entry on David, thinking of the nets he can check for specimens and the drawings that he’s still yet to complete. With a tired smile, he dips the pen again and taps the excess drops off on the glass rim before pressing the tip to the paper.  
  
_Patient consumpt—_  
  
“Am I interrupting?” comes a rattling ocean-scraped voice from just over Harry’s shoulder.  
  
Harry jumps, causing a long, heavy streak of ink to slice across the page. He gasps, fumbles with the pen, and turns quickly to look over his shoulder even as the ink spatters across his hands.  
  
There, pressed into the corner like a piece of furniture in the narrow room is the ghost of John Hartnell, gazing at Harry with a grey and terrible smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun notes, edition two!
> 
> 1) Thomas was only reassigned to Terror in the fictional version. As far as anyone else knows, IRL Tom stayed on the Erebus. 
> 
> 2) It's more than likely that John Hartnell was autopsied by Harry Goodsir (regardless of what certain academics postulate, ah-HEM) and yeah, it was definitely upside-down. 
> 
> 3) John was baptized on July 16th, 1820. This is kind of my assumption judging on Tom's birthday being exactly two months before his baptism and the general rule of thumb (at least in their neck of the woods) that baptisms just kinda happened two months after birth. That being said, I figured May 16th, 1820 sounded as good as anything. Happy almost birthday, John!


End file.
